Recycling is a major issue in every industry there is all over the world. In 3D printing, reusing materials such as filament spools for a project is not only eco-friendly but innovative as well. Tom and Tracy Hazzard talk about the different projects where you can use spools and transform it into something modern and aesthetically pleasing. They discuss how well-designed these projects are that you won’t hesitate to put them where they can be seen. The best part is, you can freely customize the designs to your own liking.
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Transforming Filament Spools Project
This is Design Inspiration Friday. I love this project. This is awesome.
I do too, especially because I remember that I had a dozen empty filament spools and I went to throw them in the recycle bin because I didn’t have anything else I could do with them. I was trying to think if there’s a project or something I could make out of them, but I didn’t have the time and they didn’t have any recycle symbols on these things. I hope they got recycled, but I don’t know. When we saw this project, I was super excited.
This is Eumakers.com and they have their own 3D printer filament spool that their filament is sold on. They teach and give you free 3D models where you print additional pieces to add to the spool parts, deconstruct the spool, and get to create these cool cute objects. They’re fun.
These are great DIY projects but first I want to say I respect this company for taking the time and caring enough to design their spool for disassembly because that was critical. A lot of people make one solid mold of a spool and it’s hard to do anything else with it except reuse it, but nobody ever ships them back to a filament manufacturer to be reused.
They call it a convertible spool. It comes apart and it converts into a new object and they’ve got some cool things. One of these is like those cake cut things where you get the single serving copies.
They come in those little plastic packs.
It’s a cake cup holder. That’s a cool project. They’ve got this one, they call it an ice cream bowl and it’s a fun bowl. I like it.
I could use it for a lot of things beyond ice cream.
They’ve got a headphone hanger and a lamp.
I want to do the headphone hanger and have it here for our headphones at our recording desk.
Filament Spools Project: You can start with some ideas from other projects and reuse their parts, but make them your own. You don’t have to do what they give you.
Do we have any other filament yet?
We don’t. It comes from Europe so it ends up being a little more expensive and a lot of shipping but I want to buy some so I can take the spool and make some of these projects.
They thought of everything in this headphone holder which I like. Not only do you see that they use the bottom of the spool and use what is the shaft and the centerpiece. It becomes a stem but the piece that you then print that’s created on top has its place for your cord to be coiled up and held. It’s for those over the ear headphones like the kind we use. The cord coils up and is out of the way, which is brilliant. They also have a lamp. That’s fun.
I like that because I’ve designed a few lampshades that we’ve 3D printed. In this case, I might even reuse a spool and convert my lampshade to fit their part. You can start with some ideas from their projects and reuse their parts, but make them your own. You don’t have to do what they give you. They’ve done a great job. These are great projects.
It’s a great jumping-on point. There’s one more. There’s the tablet stand, which is cool. I’m impressed by this and what I think about this is this should inspire us. That’s what this Design Inspiration Friday is all about. Inspire us for our next project and thinking about what you can convert, take and reuse. The scary part about you recycling those filament spools is when you said, “What can we make out of those?” I had these college dorm nightmare thoughts that you might make like coffee table things out of spools or something like that. I don’t want to see that. I want to see them transformed. That’s what these do well here.
When you can ever take something and with the use of 3D printing, added pieces or whatever transforms it into something personal. That’s cool. That’s the inspirational message for this weekend. Go out and think about a project where you can transform something you were going to throw away, something you weren’t going to use and transform it into something that doesn’t look, function the same way again and don’t look recycled either. That’s what is so great about it. They don’t look recycled.
They don’t. They’ve taken these spool parts. As they design the spool, they had to be thinking about this, “What could you use that big flared, round section for?” It could be a base for many different objects. If it’s a short object, you don’t need the middle stem. If it’s a big object, you use the stem. It’s fantastic. It’s like, “Why not make it so you can use these?”
I was impressed with the filament spool from 3D Printlife that disassemble and recyclable. They were thinking about making sure it’s made of materials you can throw into your local recycle bin and it will get recycled because it’s not made of plastic. It’s made of thick chipboard and a little steel core. It comes apart easily and it can be recycled well so that’s admirable as well but I appreciate not even needing to recycle parts but reusing them in another way.
Eumakers, great job. I’m impressed.
They’re nice. I’m hoping they continue to do more of these and they’re free. You can download these files for free. You’ve got to buy some filament first to get the spool you’re going to work with but that’s the way it is.
We hope this has inspired your weekend project and if you’ve got anything you’d like to suggest to us for upcoming episodes, please do so at @HazzDesign anywhere on social media or go to 3DStartPoint.com and make sure you go to Instagram to make sure you check out these cool designs.
Important Links:
- Eumakers.com
- 3D Printlife
- Instagram – Hazz Design
- @HazzDesign – Twitter
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